Puppet MastersS


Dollar

Durham probe: FBI offered Christopher Steele $1 million to corroborate Trump allegations in dossier

Jake Gibson, Brooke Singman
Fox News
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 05:56 UTC
5 guys
© AP/Manuel Balce Ceneta/votersedge.org/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images/Aron Chown/PA Images/Reuters/Julia Nikhinson/KJNCarter Page • John Durham • Christopher Steele • George Papadopoulos • Igor Danchenko
The FBI offered ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele $1 million to corroborate salacious allegations made in his dossier against former President Donald Trump and members of his 2016 campaign, but he was unable to do so, an FBI official testified Tuesday.

FBI supervisory counterintelligence analyst Brian Auten was the first witness in the trial of Igor Danchenko, the Russian national who served as the primary sub-source for Steele's anti-Trump dossier and has been charged with five counts of making false statements to the bureau.

Auten testified that he and a group of FBI agents went overseas in early October 2021 to speak with Steele about the dossier. During questioning by Special Counsel John Durham on Tuesday, Auten said that during those meetings the FBI offered Steele $1 million if he could corroborate allegations in the dossier. Auten testified that Steele could not do so.

Auten also said that the FBI had no corroboration of allegations in the dossier but nevertheless took that information and inserted it into the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
Read More...
Russian Flag

Russia's victory will be NATO's defeat - Stoltenberg


RT
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 15:32 UTC
Stoltenberg
© AP/Olivier MatthysJens Stoltenberg meets the media during a press conference
NATO headquarters • Brussels, Belgium • October 11, 2022
Despite tying its fate to Ukraine, the secretary general still insists that the bloc is not a party to the conflict...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Tuesday that a military victory for Russia in Ukraine would spell defeat for the entire Western alliance. However, despite providing "unprecedented support" to Kiev, Stoltenberg still claims that the US-led bloc is not a party to the conflict.

Addressing reporters on the eve of a meeting of NATO defense ministers, Stoltenberg declared that continued arms shipments to Ukraine are vital to ensure "that Ukraine wins the battle, the war against the invading Russian forces."

However, this assistance has come at a price for the alliance's own militaries. Germany's weapons and ammo stocks have been critically depleted since late August. The same month, the Wall Street Journal reported that the US' stockpiles of 155mm artillery ammunition were "uncomfortably low." Asked whether weakening its own forces to strengthen Ukraine's is a wise policy, Stoltenberg described the conflict in Ukraine as existential to the alliance.

"If [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins, that is not only a big defeat for the Ukrainians, but it will be the defeat, and dangerous, for all of us," he said.

Comment: Former Russian President Medvedev calls out NATO as having direct participation in the Ukraine conflict:
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg may have inadvertently admitted that the Western military alliance is at war with Moscow, at least in the eyes of former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. At issue is Stoltenberg's statement on Tuesday that a military victory for Russia in Ukraine would be a defeat for NATO. Medvedev called the comment:
"an open confirmation of NATO's participation in the war against our country - an unwise, but pure-hearted remark. The honest Norwegian fellow has finally admitted it."
Stoltenberg, formerly prime minister of Norway, made his comments in a press briefing as NATO ministers prepared to meet on Wednesday with Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov. Among other issues, the ministers will discuss how to meet Kiev's "urgent needs" and shore up their own weapons stockpiles after shipping billions of dollars' worth of military aid to Ukraine in hopes of helping to defeat Russian forces.
"There's an urgent need for air defense, but of course also many other capabilities - precision-guided ammunition, HIMARS and other advanced, modern, NATO-standard systems. NATO members are providing unprecedented support because they understand that we have a moral, political and security interest in ensuring that Ukraine wins the war against President Putin."
Russian officials have pointed out that providing more advanced weaponry to Ukraine, such as multiple rocket launcher (MRL) systems, will increase the risk of triggering a wider conflict. Medvedev said:
"The fastest way to bring the conflict in Ukraine to the point of no return is to arm the psychos in Kiev with longer-range MRLs. he elderly leaders of Washington and NATO upstarts must use their softened brains at least sometimes."
The NATO chief also accused Putin of "reckless nuclear rhetoric," contributing to "the most significant escalation since the start of the war." However, when asked whether the risk of a miscalculation amid heightened tensions with Russia prompted NATO members to consider canceling or modifying the bloc's planned nuclear drill next week, he said:
"Now is the right time to be firm and to be clear that NATO is there to protect and defend all allies."


Read More...
Attention

The Biden-Pelosi-Schumer deficits are a catastrophe

Quin Hillyer
Washington Examiner
Wed, 12 Oct 2022 07:29 UTC
Chuck/Nance
© truthseriesChuck Schumer • Nancy Pelosi
While the Biden administration brags that it "cut" the federal government's annual deficit in half in the fiscal year 2022, the reality is that the $1.4 trillion deficit is not a triumph but a travesty.

The "decline" in the deficit reported on Oct. 11 comes despite, not because of, any of Joe Biden's actions as president. And the remaining deficit's size remains gargantuan and grotesque.

When the famously high-spending Barack Obama left office, the then-most-recent deficit (FY 2016) was $587 billion. Even after adjusting for inflation, that's just $720 billion in 2022 dollars — or just barely one-half the size of Biden's deficit. And, to repeat, Obama's own deficit was outrageously high.

For another comparison, again allowing for inflation, then-President Bill Clinton's 1994 deficit of $203 billion, which was considered so bad that it was a major cause of the backlash that swept Republicans into a House majority for the first time in 40 years, was only 29% as large as Biden's.
Read More...
Light Saber

Rex Murphy: Danielle Smith isn't threatening Canada's Confederation. She may be saving it

Rex Murphy
National Post
Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:52 UTC
Alberta premier danielle smith
© Al Charest / Postmedia NewsDanielle Smith celebrates after winning the leadership of the United Conservative Party, and thereby the Alberta premiership, on Oct. 6, 2022.
The only thing I can find wrong about the new Alberta premier's approach is how long it took to be undertaken

The election of Danielle Smith to the leadership of Alberta's Conservatives, and thereby the premiership, appears distressing to some. I'm not thinking of those who ran against her, for whom some shadow of distress would be natural, but rather of the worried voices far afield from Alberta with no attachment to the leadership contest at all.

Her rise has ignited alarms on the Toronto/Ottawa panel shows, the Capitoline geese of our times, that any brazen assertion of Albertan autonomy may impair the Confederation. It should be noted that no similar quacking attended the invasion of Alberta's rights by the "climate-change" government determined to suffocate the province's main industry, and in fact sided with all its enemies from environmentalist organizations to the IPCC.

Comment: Danielle Smith has commented on other wrongs committed against Canadians. She bodes well.



Read More...
Vader

Did America cause Europe's energy war?

Thomas Fazi
UnHerd
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 18:17 UTC
putin biden missiles cartoon graphic ukraine
© John MacDougall/AFP via Getty ImagesGet your proxies out
Biden doesn't just want to weaken Russia

All of Europe is suffering as a result of the energy crisis, but for the continent's largest economy, this is more than just an economic crisis — it's an existential one. Once hailed as Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany is now being labelled its "weakest link".

A recession next year is now considered almost certain; industrial production is down 9% on last year; inflation has soared to double digits for the first time since the Second World War. Given Germany's deep-seated inflation-phobia, all this is problematic enough. But even more traumatic for the country is the fact that Germany is now running a negative trade balance — the first time this has happened in more than 30 years. This is a very tough pill to swallow for a country where export-led growth is more than just an economic model — it's part of its national identity.

But those days are over. The German economic machine has broken down. First it was battered by the global lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, which disrupted global supply chains, forcing German industries to pay more for increasingly scarce components that they once bought from China. The pandemic also lowered growth in key Asian export markets — first and foremost China.

Comment: After reviewing the pile of evidence, the headline's question appears purely rhetorical. The neocons are besides themselves with glee. How long they will get to celebrate is another matter entirely.

Read More...
Bulb

'Elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,' Tulsi Gabbard severs ties with the Democrats

Ian Miles Cheong
RebelNews
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 17:15 UTC
Tulsi Gabbard
Tulsi Gabbard
In a 30-minute video posted on her YouTube account, Gabbard attacked the Democrat Party, but refrained from announcing any plans to sign up with the Republicans or any other political organization.

Tulsi Gabbard, who formally ran for president under the Democratic Party, has now denounced and left the party, calling it an "elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness."

In a 30-minute video posted on her YouTube account, Gabbard attacked the Democrat Party, but refrained from announcing any plans to sign up with the Republicans or any other political organization.

"I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism," Gabbard said in an excerpt from her video.
Read More...
Propaganda

Bret Baier presses ex-CIA intel officer standing by Hunter Biden 'Russian info' letter: 'It wasn't true'

Charles Creitz
Fox News
Tue, 11 Oct 2022 17:03 UTC
Hunter Biden
© Kevin LamarqueHunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrives with wife Melissa Cohen Biden prior to President Biden awarding Presidential Medals of Freedom during a ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington, U.S., July 7, 2022.
Former Central Intelligence Agency officer David Priess defended being a signatory on a letter with more than two dozen other current and former intel agents and experts who claimed the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop bombshell looked like a "Russian information operation."

In October 2020, the Post broke the story about how then-Wilmington computer shopkeeper John-Paul Mac Isaac came into possession of the laptop first son Hunter Biden left at his store near Trolley Square.

A copy of the hard drive was provided to the FBI and another to former New York City Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

"It is for all these reasons that we write to say that the arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden's son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation," Priess and fellow signatories wrote in-part.
Read More...
Network

Kremlin Says Erdogan expected to offer to mediate peace talks during meeting with Putin


RFE/RL
Wed, 12 Oct 2022 16:57 UTC
Putin Erdogan
Russian President Vladimir Putin (right) and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attend a meeting on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, on September 16.
Moscow expects Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to formally offer to mediate negotiations between Russia and Ukraine during his meeting on October 13 with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazakhstan, a Kremlin aide has said.

Turkey is likely to raise ideas for peace in Ukraine, and Erdogan will probably propose something officially during talks with Putin, Yury Ushakov told reporters in Moscow on October 12.

"There are reports in the press that the Turkish side is putting forward specific considerations in this regard, I do not exclude that Erdogan will actively touch on this topic during the Astana contact," Ushakov said.

"So a very interesting and, I hope, useful discussion awaits us."
Read More...
Eagle

Markets are expecting The Federal Reserve to save them - It's not going to happen

Brandon Smith
Alt-Market.us
Sat, 08 Oct 2022 00:00 UTC
the fed
I have said it many times in the past but I'll say it here again: Stock markets are a trailing indicator of economic health, not a leading indicator. Rising stock prices are not a signal of future economic stability and when stocks fall it's usually after years of declines in other sectors of the financial system. Collapsing stocks are not the "cause" of an economic crisis, they are just a delayed symptom of a crisis that was always there.

Anyone who started investing after the crash of 2008 probably has zero concept of how markets are supposed to behave and what they represent to the rest of the economy. They have never seen stocks move freely without central bank interference and they have only witnessed brief glimpses of true price discovery.

With each new leg down in markets one can now predict every couple of months or so with relative certainty that investor sentiment will turn to assumptions that the Federal Reserve is going to leap in with new stimulus measures. This is not supposed to be normal, but they can't really help it, they were trained over the past 14 years to expect QE like clockwork whenever markets took a dip of 10% or more. The problem is that conditions have changed dramatically in terms of credit conditions and price environment and it was all those trillions of QE dollars that ultimately created this mess.
Read More...
Newspaper

UAE reiterate readiness to mediate contacts between Russia, Ukraine


Al Mayadeen
Wed, 12 Oct 2022 12:05 UTC
UAE President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin
© TASSUAE President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Russian President Vladimir Putin
UAE President Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed Al Nahyan met Tuesday with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and reiterated his country's readiness to mediate contacts between Russia and Ukraine, the Emirati news agency WAM reported.

During their meeting, Putin expressed Russia's appreciation for the UAE's efforts, noting that they are "a testament to its readiness to support mediation efforts."

The Russian President also briefed Al Nahyan on the situation at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) and on Russia's efforts to maintain nuclear security, indicating that Moscow is keen on the continuation of Abu Dhabi's mediation efforts.

On his part, Al Nahyan briefed Putin on the Ukrainian side's position on a number of issues, saying that the UAE is continuing to monitor the situation at the ZNPP. The Emirati President also stressed the need to keep the dialogue between Russia and Ukraine open.

Comment: It seems that many nations, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and now the UAE, are eager to provide constructive support to the ongoing events in Ukraine, and to show what appears to be their willingness to operate in the multi-polar world order.



Read More...